Considering Telekinesis’ 12 Desperate Straight Lines is probably my most-played album of the young year, it was disappointing, to say the least, that Michael Benjamin Lerner had to cancel his Feb. 26 date at Sail Inn due to illness.

He vowed via Twitter he’d return – and who doesn’t hold everyone to their tweeted promises? – and it looks like he’s making good on that, albeit in an opening slot for Portugal. The Man on May 8 at Martini Ranch.

Combine that news with Wednesday’s release of a new video for the song Please Ask For Help, and I’m getting excited all over again about the album, a 32-minute burst of infectious pop and tangled-up emotions. The new video follows a tumultuous evening for a potentially doomed couple whose large, papier-mached heads can’t hide the awkward tension between the two.

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Somehow, Aloe Blacc can sing about an oppressive relationship – as he does on Loving You Is Killing Me – and still make me smile. You can’t watch this video and not smile. It’s impossible.

In an update on the album version of the song – a little faster and a little tighter with a sprinkle of hand claps – Blacc finds himself in a bit of a dance-off with one of the coolest kids I’ve ever seen. And if there was any doubt about that, his name is Baby Boogaloo and he has a Twitter page, on which he says he loves to “pop, lock & breakdance.” Do your thing, Baby Boogaloo.

Watch the video and then pick up Blacc’s standout album Good Things, which would be on a list of my favorite albums of 2010, if I ever got around to writing such a post.

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Favorite song of 2010

But seriously, when will the new season of Mad Men start? These Lincoln commercials and National videos will hold me over for only so long.

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Favorite song of 2010
The National: Wake Up Your Saints
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The National perform on The Interface

Having posted about a new Rival Schools song in October, I nearly forgot that Pedals, the new 10-years-in-the-making album, was officially released on Tuesday.

I haven’t had a chance to dive in, but the band – fronted by former Gorilla Biscuits/Quicksand frontman Walter Schreifels – put out a video for the song Wring It Out, in which a rock-and-roll exorcism is performed on a sinister-looking gal. It’s totally safe for work, unless you find fake green upchuck potentially offensive.

And speaking of Schreifels and Quicksand, a 7-inch of the band’s debut EP (1990) – which features the amazing Omission – will allegedly be released on Record Store Day, April 16 (obviously, hitting Stinkweeds early that day). But I still dream of the day someone remasters/rereleases Slip, the Quicksand classic from 1993.

(Photo credit: Erik Snyder)

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I admit: I can sometimes be unfairly discriminatory. Some might say “shallow.” But hey, there are so many bands and so little time, I might not make it past a group’s name.

Then, as in the case of Yuck, that theory can make me feel like a horse’s ass. I’m not sure what I expected from a band called Yuck – some hipster-electro garbage maybe? – but I certainly didn’t expect what I heard on Thursday night at the Rhythm Room: a big wall-of-sound throwback to ’90s shoegaze that had me thinking about Catherine Wheel all over again.

It was the type of floor-shaking first impression that could only be made in a live setting. So in that sense, I’m glad I initially resisted. As noted by Michael Lopez in his show review at the New Times, it was the set closer, Rubber, that obliterated all in its path – a fuzzy seven-minute epic that eventually gets swallowed in an excess of feedback, noise and other assorted distortion.

Big thanks to Henri at SilverPlatter for braving what surely was a deafening experience up front to capture video of the performance (more here):

Rubber also serves as the closer on Yuck’s self-titled album, which comes out Tuesday on Fat Possum. Here is the official video:

How do you take a great song – one of my favorites of 2010 – and make it even better? Add a little ?uestlove, of course.

Electro-pop duo Phantogram made its TV debut on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday. And as with any musical guest on the show, the idea of pairing with the Roots – one of them, or all of them – makes for tantalizing possibilities. Here, ?uestlove proves that man can indeed be as efficient as machines.

Pick up Phantogram’s Eyelid Movies, released last year on Barsuk.

• Phantogram | When I’m Small

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Apex Manor’s The Year Of Magical Drinking was one of a handful of noteworthy albums released last week, a signal that 2011 is really starting to crank up.

Singer Ross Flournoy and Co. stopped by the Rolling Stone offices – where, apparently, a magazine of some sort is still published – to play a few acoustic versions of tracks off the album, including my favorite so far, the interminably catchy Under the Gun.

The guys also broke out a sincere and unironic cover of Careless Whisper by Wham! (exclamation point being part of the band’s name, of course, though I am pretty excited about this).

And here’s Under the Gun: